Research universities have been abuzz with what some are calling the “next big thing”: convergence, the integration of the life, engineering and physical sciences. This wholesale merging of minds is being billed as critical to helping researchers answer the most profound questions: How does the brain work? What causes cancer? How can we make energy more sustainable? “The convergence revolution is a paradigm shift,” write the authors of a recent white paper from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Convergence means a broad rethinking of how all scientific research can be conducted.”

Researchers can be forgiven for thinking they have heard this all before. The concept of merging tools and methods from separate disciplines is not new; the x-ray’s arrival in 1895 brought physics to the doctor’s office. More recently, the Human Genome Project spawned integrated fields such as bioinformatics and systems biology. But Phillip A. Sharp, a biology professor at M.I.T. and co-author of the white paper, argues that the true multidisciplinary nature of convergence marks a “third revolution” in science that is following in the footsteps of the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s and the genomics revolution that began in the late 1980s.

If something revolutionary is again afoot, it has only recently begun reaching critical mass, with more universities opening facilities and revamping hiring practices to foster cross-disciplinary research. Earlier this year New York University cut the ribbon on its Biomedical Chemistry Institute, with laboratories shared by chemists and biomedical researchers collaborating on new antibiotics, malaria drugs and cancer diagnostics. M.I.T.’s new David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research mixes biology and engineering labs and features common spaces designed to promote interaction. Columbia University’s recently opened Northwest Corner Building brings together engineers, physicists, chemists and biologists in open-format labs and a common dining hall and library. Other universities have started recruiting across disciplines. Michigan Technological University has experimented with hiring faculty by research theme—such as energy—rather than by department. And last October the University of Iowa announced 14 new tenure-track positions as part of a multidisciplinary hiring initiative centered on “the aging mind and brain.”

So is convergence a revolution or simply a matter of scientific evolution? It may be hard to tell until it yields its own version of the double helix or the human genome.

This article was originally published with the title Big Buzzword on Campus.

4 Comments

1. 1. JamesDavis 07:35 AM 7/18/11

   Isn't "convergence", the way it should've been done from the beginning? I was always taught that two minds (three, four, or five) are better than one mind going around in circles.
   
   When did we leave convergence behind anyways and why?

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2. 2. mihondo2010 09:28 AM 7/18/11

   Organizing research by problem is nothing new - that is mostly what industrial R&D is all about. Doing this in a university setting - again not necessarily "new" (recently unique) - but certainly is different from most traditional university organization models.
   
   Universities may be the source of cutting-edge knowledge but are rarely cutting-edge organizationally.
   
   Why do people NOT collaborate across many disciplines? There is so much activity in some disciplines that it is easy for a discipline to sub-divide itself to manage the overload. The cost is a reduction of the broader application of its findings and the isolation from others. Think of it as two competing models of knowledge for a single person - narrow and deep vs. broad and shallow.
   
   Broad and deep can only be attained by collaboration.
   
   With more resources devoted to applications, lets hope that the basic research doesn't get lost. Most industrial R&D organizations have left that role long ago (with a few exceptions).
   
   I worry that university R&D labs are focused too much on things that will result in commercial start-ups. Fundamental long term research still needs to be done somewhere.
   

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3. 3. dieselpop1 07:44 PM 7/18/11

   Isn't that what "applied fields" actually means?

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4. 4. solspot 01:12 PM 7/22/11

   There's no link to the original white paper, so I searched. I don't know why AAAS and MIT conference links to the paper were disabled, but I finally found it hidden here:
   http://web.mit.edu/dc/policy/MIT%20White%20Paper%20on%20Convergence.pdf
   
   "Convergence in science" seems like a new fund-raising fad, not a paradigm shift as the white paper claims. (What was the old paradigm?) I think they mean consilience, where data from many branches of science support a common theory; but that term comes with old baggage. For now convergence is just an empty word until it is fleshed out with details and real products.
   
   Meanwhile, it fills the need for a politically correct bussword that congressmen can throw around so they sound like they know something about the latest science, and hopefully they'll convince others to fund it.

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